Hello everyone, I built my unRAID server in 2010 and it is still working great! I'm now running the latest 6.2.0-rc3. I use it for movie storage with a Dune media player. I average 83mbps when streaming.

 

Recommended in 2010 I have an Asus m4a785t-m motherboard with (1) stick of 2gb RAM, an AMD Sempron 140 CPU. I have (5) WD 2TB green data drives, (1) WD 2TB green Parity drive, and (1) WD Black Cache drive.

 

My storage space is running low now so I would like to start the upgrade procedure and looking for advice.

 

    First off, since memory is so inexpensive, should I get (2) 4gb modules? The MB does support dual channel.

 

    Next, I'm thinking of getting (2) WD Red 8Tb drives, one for Parity and one for data. Then as money becomes available replace the other 4 data drives.

 

    Will these upgrades work? or should I try something different?

 

Should I start off removing the old parity drive, putting the new one in and doing a preclear with the beta preclear plugin?

Then assign the new precleared parity drive and let it do its thing?

 

Then replace one of my data drives with the new 8tb, preclear, etc...?

 

Sorry if these sound like elementary questions, my unRAID server has been so trouble free I haven't had to really work on it since I built it.

 

Thanks,

Tom

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hate to say it, but the AMD Sempron 140 is a old, slow, single core CPU.  I suspect that it will struggle with parity checks under unRAID 6.  I would check out parity check speeds before investing in RAM.  Also, I would think that the only benefit that you'd get from more RAM is limited write caching - I wouldn't try to spin up a bunch of dockers with that CPU  . On the other hand, since you have the streaming throughput you need maybe just leave it alone?

 

Your plan for drive upgrades is good, but you don't need to unassign your current parity to preclear the new one.

Thanks for the information. Yes, I understand the CPU is old and slow, but, the servers sole purpose is to stream ripped Blu Ray and 4K movies, and, it does an excellent job with the Dune media player. So, like you suggest I'll leave it alone. I've been running v6 since first available and have not noticed any difference in parity checks vs v5. I ran a parity check a few days ago, it took 5.5 hours. Even though this speed appears the same as with v5, would it be faster with a faster CPU? I did receive two 8Tb WD red drives today. I put the first one in as parity and it's currently rebuilding parity at 105 Mbps. Yesterday I stuck in 8Gb (2x4) of Crucial ram, It was only $35. I couldn't find out if it would be of any bennifit but it certainly won't hurt.

The 8TB parity will increase your parity check times drastically. Mine run about 24 hours. If your mboard is Socket AM3+ you can get a significant CPU boost with a mid- to upper-range AMD FX series chip. I got mine on sale @$100 but a nice six-core would be even cheaper. That would be more than enough for stream/transcoding if you were to try Plex.

 

PS> checked and yours is AM3 socket. Short search turned up some refurb $50ish AMD Athlon II X3 450. So not a lot can be done with that board.

With a Sempron 140 I suspect you're maxing the CPU computationally when doing parity checks.  This is easy to check -- look at the Dashboard and see what the CPU % is.  But with a CPU that only scores 739 on PassMark, it's pretty likely it's hitting 80% or better CPU Utilization during a parity check.

 

On the other hand, as long as it's performing suitably for you on v6, it will continue to do so with larger hard drives.  These don't cause any more "stress" than the smaller drives do (with a modest exception I'll note in a minute).

 

Bumping your memory to 8GB was a good idea -- UnRAID will definitely take advantage of the additional working room.  8GB is PLENTY for what you use the server for, so you're good for a long time with that upgrade.

 

You're already well on your way to doing the upgrades you noted => the one thing I was going to check was whether or not your controller supported > 2TB drives ... but the fact you've already installed an 8TB drive clearly means it DOES 

 

Let the 8TB finish the parity sync [Note that the rate it's doing it will likely increase a good bit after it passes the 2TB point, as your old drives will no longer be involved, and the 8TB unit has a much higher data transfer rate than your other drives.

 

Once the 8TB parity sync is completed, it would be a good idea to run a parity check to confirm all went well.  Then you can do the replacement of one of your data drives with the other 8TB unit and you'll be well on your way to a much larger data capacity 

 

A note on the point where you may in fact notice the limitation of your older CPU:  If you've been happy with the performance of this CPU running v6, the same will almost certainly still be true when you upgrade the drives.    What IS true, however, is that the new 8TB Reds have a MUCH higher data transfer rate than your old 2TB units.    Your current drives most likely have 500GB platters (possibly 667GB); whereas the 8TB Reds have 1.33TB platters, so the 8TB units have more than twice the data transfer rate of your older drives.    As with all drives, everything gets slower as the access approaches the inner cylinders ... but nevertheless the 8TB units are MUCH faster.    You'll see the impact of this when your parity sync gets past the 2TB point (where your old drives are no longer in play) ... the rate will speed up a good bit as the only remaining drive is the 8TB unit.  Same will be true when parity check gets past the 2TB point.

 

So ... what does this have to do with the CPU?    Well .. as long as you have ANY of the old drives still in the system, the computational load during a parity check will be essentially the same as it's always been as long as the check is operating in the first 2TB of the array.  But once it gets past the 2TB point, the drives involved will be providing data at a much higher rate.    Your CPU shouldn't have any problem keeping up with this as long as you only have a few 8TB drives ... but MAY be a bottleneck once you have replaced most of your drives with 8TB units.  BUT this won't be a big deal ... it simply won't be as fast as it could be => but it will still be notably faster than you're seeing now with the older drives.

 

You'll get a good feel for this after you replace the first data drive.  Pay attention to the rate the parity check jumps up to after the check passes the 2TB mark => at this point only your 2 8TB drives (parity and the 8TB data drive) will be involved in the check ... so it should be a VERY nice data rate at that point.  Look at both the rate and the CPU utilization (on the Dashboard) to see how it's doing.

 

Bottom line:  For what you use this for, you probably don't NEED to replace your CPU ... but you may decide you WANT to if you find your CPU utilization is maxing out a lot.

 

 

 

... was curious how much of a "bump" you could get in CPU "horsepower" for < $50  ==> so did a bit of checking on (a) the supported CPU list for your motherboard; (b) available processors on e-bay; and © the PassMark numbers.

 

One example:

 

Your current CPU scores 739 on PassMark.

 

For $47 you can buy a Phenom-II x4 945  [ http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-CPU-Phenom-II-X4-945-3-0GHz-Socket-AM3-HDX945WFK4DGM-GI-95W-/182235005911?hash=item2a6e0d83d7:g:wt0AAOSw7W5XOOSg ]

This CPU scores 3725 on PassMark ... more than 5 times as much "horsepower" as your current CPU !! 

 

The Phenom-II x4 945 was supported on your motherboard beginning with BIOS version 206 (a fairly early version, so you should almost certainly be fine).  Be SURE, however, that if you buy ANY new CPU to update your system with, that you check the CPU support list and see what BIOS is required to support the CPU you're going to be switching to.    If it requires a newer BIOS than what you're currently running, do the BIOS upgrade BEFORE you remove your old CPU and pop in the new one.    If you simply use the Phenom-II I just mentioned, you're almost certainly fine -- but just for grins, boot to the BIOS and confirm what version you are currently running.

 

For a bit less you could use an Athlon II x4 630, which scores 3170 on PassMark, also only requires the 206 BIOS version; and is available for $30

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Athlon-II-X-4-2-8-GHz-Quad-Core-630-Processor-ADX630WFK42GI-AM2-AM3-/331929018849?hash=item4d4882e1e1:g:sFYAAOSwh-1W2zPJ

 

Ok, you guys got me thinking about a new CPU, I ordered a used Phenom-II x4 945 from Amazon, Prime 2-day shipping for $62, should be here Saturday. All of the eBay ones come from oversees, nothing wrong with that except the time involved. I'm hoping my current heat sink and fan will work, otherwise I'll have to shop for one of those. I do have BIOS v206

 

My Parity-Sync / Data-Rebuild did speed up, it's now at 122 MB/sec with 2 hrs. remaining at the 7Tb position.

The Dashboard shows Avg. CPU load is varying between 37% and 67%

Ok, you guys got me thinking about a new CPU, I ordered a used Phenom-II x4 945 from Amazon, Prime 2-day shipping for $62, should be here Saturday. All of the eBay ones come from oversees, nothing wrong with that except the time involved. I'm hoping my current heat sink and fan will work, otherwise I'll have to shop for one of those. I do have BIOS v206

 

My Parity-Sync / Data-Rebuild did speed up, it's now at 122 MB/sec with 2 hrs. remaining at the 7Tb position.

The Dashboard shows Avg. CPU load is varying between 37% and 67%

 

Got through the Parity drive Parity-Sync / Data-Rebuild, it took 19.5 hours with an average overall speed of 115mbps

 

I now have a new 8Tb data drive in place of one of my 2Tb drives. Its doing a Parity-Sync / Data-Rebuild with an estimated time of 20 hours...

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well your Sempron 140 was doing - people with older, slower single core CPUs saw some disproportionate slow downs on parity check after upgrading to unRAID 6.  Upgrading to a dual core CPU usually fixed the problem.  That said, a parity check is more computationally intensive than a parity sync.  I would have thought a rebuild was computationally similar to a parity check, but maybe someone with more experience will comment.

 

The Phenom-II x4 945 is a 95w CPU vs. the 45w Sempron, so you most likely will need a new CPU cooler (and either get one with thermal paste applied or don't forget to get some).

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well your Sempron 140 was doing - people with older, slower single core CPUs saw some disproportionate slow downs on parity check after upgrading to unRAID 6.  Upgrading to a dual core CPU usually fixed the problem.  That said, a parity check is more computationally intensive than a parity sync.  I would have thought a rebuild was computationally similar to a parity check, but maybe someone with more experience will comment.

 

The Phenom-II x4 945 is a 95w CPU vs. the 45w Sempron, so you most likely will need a new CPU cooler (and either get one with thermal paste applied or don't forget to get some).

Thanks, this should be interesting if I get a bump in speed with the 945. If not, hey, not too much spent.

 

I did notice the wattage difference and wondering if I should get a recommended heatsink/fan for the 945. I do have Arctic silver 5 paste in my supplies. I build my own PC's when I need a new one for myself and family members. I enjoy that part of the hobby.

Coolers are rated for their heat dissipation capabilities.  At maximum loads the 945 will run faster by drawing more power, which will cause it to generate more heat.  You want a cooler that can dissipate the heat it generates.  I'm not that familiar with AMD CPU coolers, but on the Intel side you'd get into trouble if you put the stock cooler from a 45w CPU onto a 95w CPU - they don't have that much excess capacity.  You can spend any amount you want on a CPU cooler but you don't have to spend a lot.  I think I'm running a low profile $15 NewEgg/Rosewill CPU cooler in my server. 

Agree it'd be a good idea to update your heatsink -- $15 - $20 at Newegg will easily resolve that.  However, a lot of stock heatsinks are designed to work with a fairly wide range of CPU's, so your current until may be fine.    Sounds like you're plenty handy at swapping the parts, so you may simply want to use your current heatsink and pay attention to the temps you see -- then decide if you need a better one.  UnRAID is NOT very CPU intensive in most operations -- so you're not likely to stress the new CPU to the point where it's drawing more wattage than your current cooler can handle anyway.

 

As for the CPU load with v6 ==> with the initial release of v6, it was notably a LOT more CPU intensive and would often "peg" the CPU when doing a parity sync or parity check.  I had this issue with my oldest server, but noted I could mitigate it by disabling the "live" updates of the GUI during parity operations.    The current versions of v6 are set by default to automatically turn off these updates during parity operations or disk rebuilds, which helps a LOT.    You can see the impact of this by changing that setting if you want -- it will cause your parity operations to be VERY sluggish with your old Sempron.  [settings - Display Settings - Page Update Frequency ... note the checkbox to the right of it].

 

I suspect your Sempron 140 is in fact all you really "need" for what you use the server for ... but as I noted earlier, once you have several of the 8TB units, the much higher sustained data rate may cause that CPU to "peg" on parity operations/rebuilds => so bumping up the CPU to one with 5 times the "horsepower" is definitely a good idea.

 

 

 

Very good discussion and feedback, I appreciate the help very much!

I wouldn't have known what and how to do these upgrades.

I'll give feedback after everything is upgraded.

Thanks

Agree it'd be a good idea to update your heatsink -- $15 - $20 at Newegg will easily resolve that.  However, a lot of stock heatsinks are designed to work with a fairly wide range of CPU's, so your current until may be fine.    Sounds like you're plenty handy at swapping the parts, so you may simply want to use your current heatsink and pay attention to the temps you see -- then decide if you need a better one.  UnRAID is NOT very CPU intensive in most operations -- so you're not likely to stress the new CPU to the point where it's drawing more wattage than your current cooler can handle anyway.

 

As for the CPU load with v6 ==> with the initial release of v6, it was notably a LOT more CPU intensive and would often "peg" the CPU when doing a parity sync or parity check.  I had this issue with my oldest server, but noted I could mitigate it by disabling the "live" updates of the GUI during parity operations.    The current versions of v6 are set by default to automatically turn off these updates during parity operations or disk rebuilds, which helps a LOT.    You can see the impact of this by changing that setting if you want -- it will cause your parity operations to be VERY sluggish with your old Sempron.  [settings - Display Settings - Page Update Frequency ... note the checkbox to the right of it].

 

I suspect your Sempron 140 is in fact all you really "need" for what you use the server for ... but as I noted earlier, once you have several of the 8TB units, the much higher sustained data rate may cause that CPU to "peg" on parity operations/rebuilds => so bumping up the CPU to one with 5 times the "horsepower" is definitely a good idea.

I took your advise and ordered the proper heatsink/fan...

 

I just checked, my "Display" settings are currently set to "Live". Are you saying if I change this I might speed it up?

 

The data rebuild is finished, took 19.5 hours with average of 115 mbps, I'm now doing a Parity Check, which looks like it will take the same amount of time. I'm guessing the new CPU will speed this up?

 

The new CPU will be here tomorrow, new Heatsink/Fan on Tuesday

...  I just checked, my "Display" settings are currently set to "Live". Are you saying if I change this I might speed it up?

 

Not sure what you're looking at.  What I'm talking about is the "Page update frequency" under Display Settings, which can be Real-time, Regular, Slow, or Disabled.    On 6.2 there's a checkbox for this that automatically disables it during parity operations.    This should be all you need.

 

Whether the check will be faster with the new CPU depends on how often your current CPU is "pegging" (hitting 100% or close enough that it's a bottleneck).  Clearly the new one will NEVER hit the point, so it should help somewhat ... but this may not be evident until you have more than just 2 of the 8TB drives installed.  In any event, it'll be a nice upgrade -- especially in tandem with the nice memory upgrade you just did.

 

...  I just checked, my "Display" settings are currently set to "Live". Are you saying if I change this I might speed it up?

 

Not sure what you're looking at.  What I'm talking about is the "Page update frequency" under Display Settings, which can be Real-time, Regular, Slow, or Disabled.    On 6.2 there's a checkbox for this that automatically disables it during parity operations.    This should be all you need.

 

Whether the check will be faster with the new CPU depends on how often your current CPU is "pegging" (hitting 100% or close enough that it's a bottleneck).  Clearly the new one will NEVER hit the point, so it should help somewhat ... but this may not be evident until you have more than just 2 of the 8TB drives installed.  In any event, it'll be a nice upgrade -- especially in tandem with the nice memory upgrade you just did.

Yes, my "Page Update Frequency" is set to "Real-Time", sorry, I don't know where I got "Live" from? I just now checked the box "disable page updates while parity operation is running".

My Parity Check is down to 50.9 MB/sec, I've never seen it that low? Average CPU loads are still between 40% and 70%.

 

Update: Now its back up to 163 MB/sec, probably got past the data? Or, putting a check mark on "disable page updates while parity operation is running"? And, CPU Loads are higher in the 70%- 80%....

 

Can't wait to see if the new CPU will speed up parity checks

It was almost certainly very close to the 2TB point, where all of the old drives were being accessed on the slowest inner-cylinders.  This is normal.    As soon as it passed the 2TB point, it jumped way back up, since they were no longer involved.

 

You'll always see the rates slow appreciably as the check approaches the inner cylinders of a disk.

 

It was almost certainly very close to the 2TB point, where all of the old drives were being accessed on the slowest inner-cylinders.  This is normal.    As soon as it passed the 2TB point, it jumped way back up, since they were no longer involved.

 

You'll always see the rates slow appreciably as the check approaches the inner cylinders of a disk.

 

Good to know, thanks!

The parity and data upgrades were a success!

The final parity check finished early this morning.

"Last check completed on Sat 13 Aug 2016 02:23:54 AM EDT (today), finding 0 errors.

?Duration: 19 hours, 45 minutes, 2 seconds. Average speed: 112.5 MB/sec"

I receive the new/used CPU in the mail today. If it works I'll do another parity check and report my findings.

Thanks

 

Sounds good.  I really don't expect the new CPU to make much difference in the parity check speed, since you weren't totally maxed out (90-100%) on your CPU, but it may make a bit.    But once you have more than just a couple of the higher-speed 8TB drives, it will easily be able to keep up -- whereas that wouldn't be the case with the old CPU.

 

Overall, you've made a HUGE improvement in your server 

Sounds good.  I really don't expect the new CPU to make much difference in the parity check speed, since you weren't totally maxed out (90-100%) on your CPU, but it may make a bit.    But once you have more than just a couple of the higher-speed 8TB drives, it will easily be able to keep up -- whereas that wouldn't be the case with the old CPU.

 

Overall, you've made a HUGE improvement in your server 

 

Thanks, I appreciate all the help...

One more question please, when I want to replace some of my other 2Tb data drives with 8Tb can I do more than one at a time?

Sounds good.  I really don't expect the new CPU to make much difference in the parity check speed, since you weren't totally maxed out (90-100%) on your CPU, but it may make a bit.    But once you have more than just a couple of the higher-speed 8TB drives, it will easily be able to keep up -- whereas that wouldn't be the case with the old CPU.

 

Overall, you've made a HUGE improvement in your server 

 

Thanks, I appreciate all the help...

One more question please, when I want to replace some of my other 2Tb data drives with 8Tb can I do more than one at a time?

 

No.  The server is only single-fault tolerant, so when a drive "fails" (which is effectively what you're doing when you remove a drive) it can only rebuild that drive.    Note that if you had dual parity (which would, of course, require another 8TB parity drive) you could then, in theory, do 2 at once; but I still wouldn't recommend it.  [Probably the most important advantage of dual parity is that you're not "running at risk" when a drive fails and you're rebuilding it with a replacement.  If you intentionally fail 2 drives, then you just lost that advantage.]

 

Sounds good.  I really don't expect the new CPU to make much difference in the parity check speed, since you weren't totally maxed out (90-100%) on your CPU, but it may make a bit.    But once you have more than just a couple of the higher-speed 8TB drives, it will easily be able to keep up -- whereas that wouldn't be the case with the old CPU.

 

Overall, you've made a HUGE improvement in your server 

 

Thanks, I appreciate all the help...

One more question please, when I want to replace some of my other 2Tb data drives with 8Tb can I do more than one at a time?

 

No.  The server is only single-fault tolerant, so when a drive "fails" (which is effectively what you're doing when you remove a drive) it can only rebuild that drive.    Note that if you had dual parity (which would, of course, require another 8TB parity drive) you could then, in theory, do 2 at once; but I still wouldn't recommend it.  [Probably the most important advantage of dual parity is that you're not "running at risk" when a drive fails and you're rebuilding it with a replacement.  If you intentionally fail 2 drives, then you just lost that advantage.]

 

Understood, thanks for the detailed explanation.

I'm sorry, I have another question please.

I have a second backup USB flash drive, also with 6.2.0-rc3. I keep both USB's updated. I decided to start the server with the second one, it is not recognizing the new drives. I'm guessing I need to copy the contents over from the first USB drive?